Closing session of COP27 Climate Conference at Sharm El-Sheikh International Convention Center in Egypt | photo credit: AFP
Fraud in public law is a deliberate attempt to evade the provisions of law. For example, in climate negotiations, areas of interest to developing countries have been left out or under-covered, while other areas have been over-regulated. There is not even a discussion of equitable sustainable development. At COP27, the policy debate was no longer legitimized by science. There appears to be a concerted effort to fraudulently change the basic structure of the climate treaty.
There are three problems with the current negotiation process. First, citizens in developed countries are not even aware that two-thirds of their national emissions of carbon dioxide come from their diet, transportation, and the residential and commercial sectors, which together make up a major portion of their GDP. ; The consumption areas are not independent silos but reflect their urban lifestyle. Second, this process ignores that global well-being will also follow the urbanization of developing country populations, which will require fossil fuels for infrastructure and energy to achieve comparable levels. Third, the need for large quantities of cement and steel in developing countries for infrastructure – constituting essential emissions as they urbanize – is not being considered.
As late urbanizers, developing countries account for more than half of annual emissions and most of the emissions growth. They may not have access to many new technologies to decarbonize quickly. The result is a shrinking of their policy space and human rights, jeopardizing efforts to achieve comparable levels of well-being with those that had previously developed without hindrance. Because of the way the agenda is set, this type of discussion is not happening in climate talks.
politics, not science
The foundation of climate treaties in international environmental law is questionable. In the run-up to the Stockholm Conference on the Environment (1972), the United States Secretary of State’s Advisory Committee stated that “Urbanization has transformed the country with seventy-five percent of the population living in urban areas … We must find ourselves not only as victims of environmental degradation but as environmental aggressors and change our patterns of consumption and production accordingly”. A scientific committee set up by the US State Department previously concluded that “long-range planning to deal with global environmental problems must take into account the total ecological burden … from the systematic reduction in per capita production of goods and services that Controlling the burden would be politically unacceptable. A concerted effort is needed to orient the technology towards making human demands on the environment less severe.” The power play revolved around risk management rather than technology transfer and the use of natural resources within ecological boundaries for the good of all.
differentiated general responsibility
The climate treaty aims to avoid the concentration of cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide, prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system, and enable sustainable economic growth. The Paris Agreement (2015) agreed on a 1.5°C global temperature target. In 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recommended that net emissions need to reach zero around 2050. In Glasgow, negotiators zeroed in on coal in 2021 to reduce future emissions. The initiative was not based on science and ignored the IPCC’s key finding on the centrality of the carbon budget, i.e. the cumulative emissions associated with a specific amount of global warming that scientifically links temperature targets to national action.
Carbon budgets are robust because they can be accurately predicted from climate models. And, they are most useful for policy because they link climate to the economy, consistent with the science of both. In 2018, the IPCC estimated the budget for a 50% chance of avoiding more than 1.5°C warming to be 2,890 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (now, it is less than 400bn tonnes), raising the question of how much developers Will delay achieve comparable levels of well-being.
climate justice
Climate injustice flows from the negotiations, not the text of the climate treaty. First, the process adopted the structure of international law in a way that dismissed historical responsibility for a persistent problem, and gradually shifted the burden onto China and India.
Second, the agenda was set around the globalized material flow described as global warming (symptom), not wasteful use of energy.
Third, public finance is used as a means to secure a political objective, not to solve the problem itself. The $100 billion promised in Paris remains unfulfilled, along with pre-2020 commitments that incentivized developing countries to agree to global temperature targets. And, new funding for ‘loss and damage’ will come from a “mosaic of solutions”, which is a breach of trust.
Fourth, the long-term trend has been ignored. With a sixth of the global population, the share of developed countries will still be 30% in 2035. Asia, home to half the world’s population, would see emissions increase by 40% within its carbon budget. The pressure to further reduce emissions displaces their human rights.
India’s emphasis on LIFE (or “lifestyle for the environment”) goes back to basic science with a shift from wasteful consumption of natural resources to the individual. Consumption-based assessment challenges the ‘universality’ that has dominated negotiations and the usual path of deduction based on single models. Formalizes a ‘diversity’ of carbon budget solutions. For example, in developed countries, exchanging excessive consumption of red meat for poultry could meet the global emissions reductions needed by the end of the century. A reasonable change for developing countries is about keeping within their carbon budget. And no de-carbonization of arbitrarily selected areas.
Mukul Sanwal is a former United Nations diplomat in the Climate Change Secretariat